


You're No Mistake

by athenril_of_kirkwall (al_fletcher)



Series: Qakar Adaar [3]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Drunk Writing Circle, Existentialism, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Prompt Fic, Romance, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 16:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17470868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/al_fletcher/pseuds/athenril_of_kirkwall
Summary: The Inquisitor ponders the darkspawn and the qunari.





	You're No Mistake

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for m!Adaar/Cassandra, “Forgotten, Shoulders, Clay”

Qakar turned it over in his hands as he sat by the small fire they had set up, staring at the idol crafted by layering mud around a rune. It was in the crude shape of a man, with two small animal claws serving as horns.

Cassandra, happy with the perimeter, came over to where he was sitting, peering over his shoulder to look at it.

“What is it?”, she asked.

Threading his fingers through the chain fixed behind the neck of the statue, he explained, “It’s an amulet. I found it hanging off the neck of one of the emissaries we killed whilst clearing out the Storm Coast. It must have meant something to him.”

“You don’t suppose that’s a desire demon? Or a kossith?”

Qakar laughed harshly. “If it’s a desire demon, it’s hardly very flattering, is it? It’d probably have a lump or two more on the front, that’s for sure. It’s a bit gangly to be an ogre, I think. No, I believe that’s a likeness of my people, Qun or not.”

Cassandra sat on the stump beside him.

“It’s troubling you.”

“You could tell?” he asked.

“It was evident. You always did wear your emotions on your sleeves. We know the darkspawn are able to corrupt even your kin. Is that the matter?”

“Not quite,” he replied. “Corypheus called my people ‘a mistake’. ‘A mistake’, and yet still at least one darkspawn saw fit to make an idol of one of us and wear it around their throat. I don’t understand it.”

“There is much about the darkspawn and the blight we now realise we do not grasp. Did he not also say that the Black City was already empty when he arrived?”

Qakar said, “Well, even if you were working with flawed information at least that’s better than nothing. Bull said that Qun knew so little about the Blight they only learned anything about it during the last one, after their scout returned from Ferelden.”

“Then this idol represents the sum of our ignorance.”

 “They’re enthralled to archdemons, but they’re not cretinous. They think, they speak, and they make art, crude as it is.” He shook his head, turning it over in his hand again.

“You wish to _learn_ from them?” Cassandra asked, surprised.

“Hardly,” Qakar said, laughing. “I doubt the price of gaining the taint would be acceptable to anyone, not even the Wardens. Yet still, they have culture, and imaginations too. And at least they know where they’re from, more or less, and we don’t’.”

He stood up, exasperated, and let the idol fall from his hand into Cassandra’s.

“Is that what concerns you, then? That even the darkspawn have known origins, but not the qunari, or the kossith, as it were?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s what it is. A ‘mistake’…is that all my people are? Some demented interbreeding exercise? Or a reaver experiment gone wrong?”

Placing the idol which had caused Qakar’s existential quandary on the stump as she stood up, Cassandra gently took his arms from behind.

“You are no mistake.”

A smile curled his lip. “So, did Andraste herself send me to you, then?”

She snorted, releasing him. “And here I thought you were having a genuine moment of introspection. I know that you were no Andrastrian before you stepped out of the Fade, but surely the path the Inquisition has taken has changed you, even a little?”

He turned around to face her. “Perhaps. I lived for little besides food and pay before this. Some people take different things to convince them of a higher power. I must say, if this doesn’t, nothing ever will.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. “And for my part, I thank the Maker that your mark found a host willing to believe beyond themselves. In someone’s else’s hands, the world may have been better off even under Corypheus.”

Qakar laughed. “Good to know I’m the better alternative. Why, Cassandra, you’re learning to be droll.”

“Your poisonous influence,” she said wryly. “And meeting you, knowing you, that was no mistake either. This I know in my heart, higher power or otherwise.”

“This I know too,” he said.

They kissed, lips finding each other gently and tenderly.

As they broke away, Cassandra glanced to the side, asking, “Shall we check if Scout Harding is done with her reconnoitring?”

Qakar nodded, saying, “We might as well. If there was that emissary it might have drawn others to the surface.”

Cassandra gathered her things and headed for the ridge. As Qakar did so, he picked the idol up, wrapping its chain around his staff and letting it dangle from its shaft. He didn’t need it to remind him that he was no mistake…but it didn’t hurt either.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: https://athenril-of-kirkwall.tumblr.com/post/182133112415/


End file.
